Yeh this seems to be a Northern European obsession. In my experience no one gives a toss entering and exiting in Portugal, Spain and Greece.

HEL used to have the habit of stamping the last unused page at the END of the passport rather than following on from other countries.

I get that they are busy but it’s forever a bug bearer of mine that they don’t try to stamp in the next space to keep the stamps in some kind of chronological order.

She would have spontaneously combusted if you had dared to ask "Isn't the UK in Europe?"

The Nordics are appalling for being picky. I've just checked and despite hundreds of stamps in my 3 year old passport which I'll have to renew soon, I've spent 23 days in Schengen in the last 180. They're welcome to count if they like.

The EU gets way too much of a pass because of Brexit (the "it's all your fault for leaving the EU..." idea). The passport control is atrocious - literally using 19th Century techniques, and the saga with EES and ETIAS would be amusing if it wasn't such a pain in the neck - the technology that's in place is going to be obsolete soon and in comparison to some of even the poorer SE Asia countries is laughable. Actually, outside a few predictable bottlenecks - AMS, BRU, MAD, it's usually not that bad, but given there are attitude issues with the staff that waste everyone's time, it's really very poor. The UK does this better in all aspects, I don't honestly care if it's to save money (that's usually the goal of automation anyway) the system works well.

And yes I know they have 28 different systems to reconcile, but keeping a record of in and out isn't all that complex a proposition.

I’m Norwegian resident but lucky enough to be dual UK / Irish. Other Brits in Norway report plenty of this stuff.

Yes. It happened as described. And nothing more to it.

We’re both lawyers and have no reason to lie for likes.

Nope. They just said they didn’t believe him, and so he didn’t have a valid reason for entering the country.

Apparently a few other people were denied entry - including someone who’d flown from the US via LHR, who was also being sent back to LHR.

​​​​​​​I've recently been hassled in Tromso too....got quite a lecture on departure. The main allegation seemed to be that I did not know how many days I've been in Schegen over the past 180 days, and, instead of making up a number, I told the guard that I do not count them, so I do not know. The guard then tried to count up the number of days, but I've got so many stamps, a few ones missing entries, a few stamps on top of each other, that this was never going to succeed. The guard promptly gave up and returned to lecturing me.

So if they were denied entry and sent back to LHR does that mean that the airline (BA in this case) would be fined or some other sanction applied?

Which, with due respect, is saying more about the accuracy of what you "see" than about reality. ;)

As an example, France's border force alone, despite plenty of automation (but less than in the UK) is over 25% larger than the UK's despite having nearly twice fewer international entries (France gets a lot more visitors than the UK but the vast majority arrive from another Schengen country without border checks).

As for the US, its border force is 6 times larger than the UK's and no, that's nowhere near proportional to the number of entries either.

The whole suggestion that somehow, automated border control would not automatically imply very significant cuts in border force numbers (or that its reversal would not necessarily entail significantly larger needs for staff) is a complete non starter.

The financial reason rationale gets reeled out on every thread like this. We aren’t the only European country who needs to save money.

I am assuming he was getting more TP/lower cost ticket, etc for the route. Where was his originating airport? LHR?

99.99% of people don't do what FT do. I would assume the routing seemed suspicious to the border patrol agent, especially if they are ramping up questioning to everyone; to just overnight at Stockholm to only go back to LHR then to JFK. Why not just fly to JFK directly would be their mind set.

Indeed, which is why pretty much every European country is moving in that direction, most certainly including Schengen area countries. This has been delayed and in many countries poorly implemented (largely because the infrastructural choices are precisely organised by each country whilst the Schengen rules are area wide so discrepancies lead to huge problems) but be sure that if the whole continent could use a magic wand and switch to full automation they'd be waving like crazy!! Numerous trials of passport less border crossing too for the same reason.

My understanding is that the airline would only get a financial sanction if the documents being presented at the border by the traveller should have been rejected by the airline doing their document checks.

The airline can only go so far with their checks, they're not expected to get loup glasses out and check if documents are fake or manipulated, and are only expected to to take the documents at face value married with what TIMATIC says. Immigration officers usually have the ultimate discretion and power to refuse entry. This could be intelligence based data that their immigration systems have, and entry can be refused irrespective of whether a traveller is asserting visa-free, visa-on-arrival, ETA, or visa based entry, or any other form of entry (possiblity with the exception of diplomats?)